Optimism -- Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same
shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this
resinous, unretractable earth.

The Poet Comments on Yet Another Approaching Spring -- Mary Oliver

Don't flowers put on their
prettiness each spring and
go to it with
everything they've got? Who

would criticize the bed of
yellow tulips or the blue
hyacinths?
So put a

bracelet on your
ankle with a
bell on it and make a
little music for

the earth beneath your foot, or
wear a hat with hot-colored
ribbons for the
pleasure of the

leaves and the clouds, or at least
a ring with a gleaming
stone on your finger; yesterday
I watched a mother choose

exquisite ear-ornaments for someone
beloved, in the spring
of her life; they were
for her for sure, but also it seemed

a promise, a love-message, a commitment
to all girls, and boys too, so
beautiful and hopeful in this hard world
and young.